The Blogs_ When a Jew is Torn Between Freedom and Family _ Andy Blumenthal _ The Times of Israel.pdf

Article in The Times of Israel by Andy Blumenthal: Shulem Deen’s All Who Go Do Not Return is a powerful memoir chronicling his escape from the insular Skverer Hasidic community. Deen’s world was shaped by strict prohibition of secular influences, arranged marriage, and demand for total conformity, enforced by harsh punishments and social control. After being cast out for his growing doubts, Deen lost his family, faith, and community, and struggled through loneliness and depression. His story is both a lament for what was lost and a testament to the steep, lasting price of freedom, raising profound questions about the cost of authenticity and the challenge of losing everything.

1. THE BLOGS
Andy Blumenthal
Leadership With Heart
When a Jew is Torn
Between Freedom and
Family
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2. Recently someone recommended to me this classic Jewish Book Award winner,
Shulem Deen’s All Who Go Do Not Return. Indeed, it is a searing, courageous
memoir that lays bare the suffocating control of the Skverer Hasidic community
—and the immense emotional toll of breaking free. Within this cloistered world,
life was governed by an intricate system of prohibitions and obligations: Yiddish
was the accepted language, life revolved around hours of prayer and yeshiva
study, marriages were arranged without intimacy or choice, and birth control
was forbidden. Secular influences—books, music, television, the internet, and
even curiosity—were condemned as threats to the soul. At the center stood the
Rebbe, revered with near-divine devotion, while dissent of any kind was swiftly
crushed.
While not everyone in this community was unhappy, some people just could not
live like this. Deen’s rebellion began quietly—with curiosity, questions, and the
faint stirrings of doubt. But the more he observed, the more he saw the cruelty
behind the piety. Children were beaten for the smallest missteps, adults
ostracized for nonconformity, and families terrorized through public shaming
and vandalism. The system’s obsession with purity demanded total submission,
leaving no space for individuality or truth.
When Deen’s skepticism could no longer be contained, he was excommunicated
—cast out as a heretic. The price of freedom was devastating. He lost his faith,
his wife, his five children, and the only world he had ever known. What followed
was a journey through loneliness, depression, and despair. Disconnected from
his past and unsure of his future, he drifted through jobs, cities, and identities,
even seeking refuge at a hippie retreat in a desperate search for meaning.
Yet in the ashes of exile, Deen found something sacred: the freedom to think, to
feel, and to be. He embraced the secular world, formed genuine friendships, and
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3. discovered his voice as a writer. The liberation was real—but so was the grief. No
measure of autonomy could fully compensate for the loss of family, faith, and
belonging.
And this, perhaps, is the cruelest part of Deen’s story: the impossible choice it
demands. How can anyone be asked to surrender their own flesh and blood—
their spouse, their children, their very community—simply to claim the most
basic human right to think freely, to express oneself genuinely, and to live with
honesty and integrity? It is a demand no one should ever have to face, yet
countless men and women in insular religious communities do so every day,
torn between truth and survival, conscience and connection.
Deen’s struggle resonates deeply with me. I, too, have wrestled with the tension
between religious devotion and the modern, secular world. After leaving a
suffocating yeshiva high school following my junior year to attend college early,
I experienced a profound sense of discovery. I found my Jewishness anew—not
in isolation, but in the broader world. I never took off my kippah, even when my
path diverged from strict orthodoxy. Though I strayed for a time, I eventually
returned to faith on my own terms—through choice, love, and a genuine
yearning for closeness to Hashem, rather than the demands of conformity. To
me, serving God out of love and desire is far purer and far more enduring than
obedience born of fear or routine.
Ultimately, the struggle Deen describes is not his alone—it is a struggle that
every one of us faces in some form. Even if not externally, we each grapple
internally with this same tension: how to be true to ourselves, to follow the
voice of conscience and reason, while remaining faithful to the Torah and to
Hashem. Finding that balance—between freedom and faith, individuality and
devotion—is the sacred work of a lifetime.
In the end, All Who Go Do Not Return is both lament and liberation—a testament
to the soul’s hunger for authenticity and connection. It reminds us that

4. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andy Blumenthal is a dynamic, award-winning leader who writes frequently about Jewish life,
culture, and security. All opinions are his own.
freedom, while precious, can exact a terrible price. The challenge is not merely
to escape constraint, but to find holiness within freedom—to walk with God not
because we must, but because we yearn to. Deen’s story forces us to ask the
hardest question of all: what does it truly mean to be free—and how can we
ensure that our freedom deepens, rather than diminishes, our faith?
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